By means of a computer-controlled matrix of 64 vibrators that can be separately excited with a wide range of intensities and temporal patterns to achieve nearly any desirable configuration of cutaneous spatio-temporal patterns, there will be produced a succession of haptic pattern sets to be used in perceptual and learning tasks by trained observers. Subsets of the patterns generated will be selected to optimize the tactile information processing capabilities of observers, thereby providing potential designers of sensory aids with a dictionary of most useful patterns. The basis for optimization of processing will be sought in the commonalities among patterns thus selected, as well as in the dynamics of the performance of observers in related tasks such as temporal order judgments, reaction latencies and retention of patterns over time. Simultaneously there will be conducted research with simpler single- or two-to-three-element displays to examine the problems of localization anomalies in the skin or other senses, as well as of temporal acuity for events under perturbing information from other modalities. Work begun in the laboratory on peripheral mechanisms of vibratory sensitivity will continue with more sophisticated examinations of tissue mechanical impedance effects, as well as of peripheral neural responses to mechanical excitations in the intact skin of humans.